Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/184

Rh imported from England and the Cape, ixias especially, appear in the greatest beauty; both they and the annuals which we are accustomed to see at home, as well as the large scarlet geraniums, revelling in a season which though possessing the name of winter has none of its home characteristics. Whilst this transformation was effecting in the gardens, which had lately looked so desolate, the bush was not behindhand in assuming a new appearance. The wattle, which is one species of the many kinds of Australian acacia, led the van amongst the indigenous flowering trees, and showed its pale yellow blossoms before May was over. Later in the rainy season the wattle was outvied by the acacia called the "raspberry jam," the flowers of which are of the brightest gold colour and grow in such abundant clusters that some of these trees appear better furnished with flowers than leaves. One variety droops like a weeping willow, so that when in bloom every separate spray is a long hanging wreath, "waving its yellow hair," as Moore says of the acacias in Arabia. All the jam-trees are in their chief beauty in September, a time of year when heavy westerly gales often occur, bringing with them sharp sudden storms of rain, broken by bright gleams of sunshine. On such days to stand upon a hill-side that commands a tract covered with these trees, their flowers at one moment obscured by the driving rain and wind, and at the next brilliantly lighted up by the sun, is a sight not soon to be forgotten. Many of the acacias which I have been describing reach the height of 40 feet at least, and are sometimes much overgrown by a thick parasite with long trailing twigs, bearing a red waxy-looking flower at Christmas-time.